For you, I chased down atlantic until it was drained and empty, consuming every last drop, and still, you were thirsty.
Xans, Oxy, gram, adderall, molly, vicodin, ketamine, codeine, amphetamine, heroin, every medication legal and illegal you selfishly overdosed on like it’s the sweetest candy, drugs and money fucking everything up, riding the waves, breathing in the ozone layer and craving the vaporous atmosphere, until all you could hear are birds singing at midnight and all your blank glazed eyes could see where pink shadows coalescing in the basement and the sound of your own synesthetic undersea voice, sewn up into crude stitches before it shatters soundlessly against the restless pastel ghosts; and you find out you were uncomfortably lying on your back in the bedroom floor all along, staring at the unlit ceiling dripping what you thought were your own tears but turned out to be rainwater, dial tone screeching your garbled songs, trying to call nobody at half past four in the morning, worn-down carpet igniting the smoke alarms with your interminable vices. I could only wish to hell that I was there to put it out.
There was a certain elegant delicacy in your tactlessly constructed words, soft beatnik aspersion and aggressive indie slurs romancing and entrancing my chilled spine, humming saxophone amid the alluring amalgamation of incoherent voices intertwining together into a strange, tangible, panicking tranquil. It was an art form in itself, inimitable, one of a kind, scattered accentuation your personal intricate signature. Every careless lilt about the dangerous pseudonymous girls you slept with last night, Angie, Cassie, Roxy, and the pill-popping pharmacists you’ll hold up with a gun as soon as the sun hits tomorrow. All these unsettling courtesies set in three parts of pastel grey and explicit roses, the dalliance and the nostalgia of everything, you were speaking in a foreign language only the truly sick in the head could properly understand, and the way you talked about all the mental pressure and self-esteem and choking anxiety so goddamn beguilingly, the way you talked about addiction as if you weren’t an addiction in itself, the way you just fucking aren’t, it got me overdosing on the panoply panache and sovereign shit on your bedside, but I was so into it.
How many times have you made my pulse beat when it was no longer mine? Every single afternoon, I wake up with a stabbing jolt like a guillotine’s rope pulled tight against my throat, gasping and desiring desperately for more, more of your prevarications. It was a talk show tactic, and you were the host telling me to talk slow and tell no lies, and I was your prize trophy, spilling my secrets and picking my battles cautiously, even though I knew that you were probably lying to me all along. The world was on your shoulders, angels hissing temptations under your skin, and we danced to the beat of your laughter and talked endless miles of film spiels about friends and no friends, gravity and good vibes, church walls and dancing in the dark with the devil, indiscretions and junkie stories high on adrenaline and dopamine, driving too fast and run over by the cops and swimming and thrashing in paradise until we’re so much higher than before, and everything was rhapsodic…until you hit the trigger and got me begging on my bleeding knees again. I’m scratching my nails, shivering madly, abusing my liver, and tearing the veins off my dead-ass heart as you killed my sanity, and baby I was only 23.
I’m obsessive. You said hold your breath, you’ll save me from the fading injections and we’ll run away right here to the underside of the world, and I won’t need to miss you and your anchor tattoo. And fuck it, but I believed all your twisted promises so fervently. I didn’t expect to fall instantaneous victim for such a scrupulous stratagem, this alternative relativity of drugs and parties not my accustomed niche, fucking up this whole thing. I was married to the screaming voices that serenade me everyday and haunt me every night, and I was theirs to render completely deaf into freedom; until you came out of nowhere and divorced me from the nightmares, and you incarcerated me—you made me even worse. You’re a psychopathic fringe wearing a smile on your face and holding a knife in your hand, you’re becoming a work of art. You don’t look too sane when you act like that, and babe, you won’t live too long with a mind like that. I was always fastidious about the taste of serotonin that I place against my lips, but even though it’s fire I’m kissing now, I’ve already been burnt, I fucking have. And I love counting the cigarette stains in my fragile marred skin, sepia-shaded nicotine tattooed permanently between my fingertips, branding me with your whispered name. My parents say I’m crazy, but I only wanna be buried six feet under your bed, ready to meddle about and smoke the cancerous stars away with you anytime. They say be rational about these things, but I stopped being reasonable the moment I listened to your drugstore symphonies and drowned in your cheap perfume. This chemical destruction is beautiful. I’ll keep it up, and I’ll keep riding the waves, crashing into you once more. And why stop at all? Okay is all I know right now. Mama I’m sorry, but reality’s boring.
For you, I’ll chase down atlantic until I’m drained and empty, consuming every last drop, and still, I’ll be thirsty for your eyes.
A Lost Painting
The Cynical Obscurantist 